The Monster
by mywildimagination
Summary: Katara's demons continue to haunt her after the incident with Yakone. Contains explicit bloodbending, may need to be changed to an M rating.


The cell door closed behind Katara, leaving her alone with him and the light of the full moon.

"You're a monster," she told him.

He lifted his head, and for the first time, her eyes made contact with his gleaming grin.

"How can you live with yourself, after all the people you've hurt, the families you've destroyed? What kind of man are you?"

He made no answer, no change in his facial expression.

"You're not like the man who killed my mother. He was weak. But you – you're twisted. You get the sickest pleasure from reaching inside someone and controlling them. You like it, don't you – you like like the feel of the fluids in their bodies. You like the sound of their muscles contracting – trying to resist you. You like making their heart constrict inside their chest, wanting to beat faster, but having to slow down under your control. You like it when their surface vessels break under your control and form bruises. And you like contorting their organs one at a time, and the pain they feel as they slowly die. And that final moment, when their heart stops beating -" Katara breathed deeply. "Yon Rha felt nothing. You feel pleasure. You love evil."

His smile widened as he spoke, just above a whisper. "I do."

Katara yelled. She threw him against the wall, where he stayed, spine erect and flat to the cinderblocks. "How do you like it now, Yakone?" asked Katara. "Do you like how that feels? Do you like feeling your sense of self taken away from you?"

She reached inside him, feeling every organ, every bone, every vessel. She broke his capillaries on every inch of skin she could find, relishing as the blood flooded his surface. She twisted his limbs, his muscles, his neck. He made no sound, but she could feel his strain.

"How does that feel?" she asked him. "How does it feel to be at the mercy of someone who hates you without reservation, someone who threatens everything you've worked for, everything you are?" She reached inside a larger blood vessel and broke it. "How does it feel to know you're dying, and that your wife and children will be left without you? That every single person who depends on you will be left with nothing but a broken body?"

She slammed him against the floor and then back up to the wall. "I healed him after he finished you," she cried. "I saw what you would have done to him. I'll be damned if I don't see it happen to you." She twisted each organ, one by one. Their fluids broke free, clogging his abdominal cavity in any space they could find. Only his brain and heart she left untouched.

"I've had enough people harming those I care about. I've held enough dead loved ones in my arms. I felt him cold and breathless once. I won't let it happen again."

She pulled his head forward, away from the twisted position she'd held it in, and was shocked to find the same gleaming grin on his face. It boiled her blood like nothing else could – how dare his face not be contorted in pain. It was the only form of bloodbending left to him in his impotence.

How she wanted to tear that grin as she had torn his insides.

Katara reached inside his brain and tore that, too. But even then the grin failed to leave, and stayed frozen in his eyes. Frustrated, she jammed his face into the ground, and the rest of his body followed with a sickening _schlock_. He lay at sick angles, broken and unconscious, but she could feel his heart still beating – slowing in preparation of his impending death, but beating.

It was his last defiance. His body would control when it stopped working – so she decided to take that, too. She squeezed the pulsing sac, and it vibrated in its attempt to keep moving. If she could just hold it tighter, it would implode on itself and be still – she threw all her moon energy into crushing its dying resistance -

Katara's eyes snapped open, and ragged pants seized her lungs. To her dismay, Aang was already awake and watching her sadly, stroking damp tendrils of hair from her face. She turned away from him and sat up in bed. Out the window shone a crescent moon.

"It was the same dream again, wasn't it?"

Her forehead met her knees as she whispered, "Yes."

She let him throw his arms around her and cradle her to his chest, though her throat constricted and she had a sinking feeling in her stomach. "I don't know what's wrong with me," said Katara.

"You're feeling so much pain and rage," said Aang, "and you're trying to stifle it. Of course it would come out in your dreams. Don't worry. It will pass."

"It's more than just pain and rage," she told him. "It's the worst part of myself – the one that goes to any lengths for revenge. I'm so afraid of her."

"There are parts of myself that scare me too," he said. "You know them. You've seen them. You need to accept her, Katara. Accept her and let her go."

Katara let out a shaking sob. She couldn't help but feel tainted by her dreams, and undeserving of the loving husband that comforted her from them. After all, he was the one who had actually faced Yakone. He was the one who'd endured his nearly-fatal bloodbending grip. So why was she broken and he her comforter?

"I'm sorry, Aang," she said.

"Don't be. I love you."

Katara cried in earnest then, even as he leaned over and kissed her forehead. His gift was sweet but bitter, a two-edged sword. All she could give in return was an echoing reciprocation.

"I love you too."


End file.
